


Toothpicks

by awalkinthepark



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal - Fandom, Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Angry!Will, Casual Cannibalism, F/M, Fannibal - Freeform, Fear of Drowning, Hannibal - Freeform, Hannibal Being Hannibal, Hannigram - Freeform, Jealousy, Loss of Agency, Non-Consensual Medication Use, Other, Pity, Sleepy Will Graham, before the naked spooning, but drugged!Will, e pronoun, non-binary Will Graham - Freeform, so with less yelling, water phobia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:14:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 2,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22133560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awalkinthepark/pseuds/awalkinthepark
Summary: Moodlets about after The Fall on the original series.But Will is gender non-binary. And we’re not sure how many parts Bedelia still has on her . . .
Relationships: Bedelia Du Maurier & Hannibal Lecter, Bedelia Du Maurier/Hannibal Lecter, Hannibal Lecter/Will Graham, Will Graham & Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1





	1. Toothpicks under tension

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired in equal parts by maydei’s Neither and Both https://archiveofourown.org/series/1525463 , re-watching the original Hannibal TV series’ season two and Downton Abbey’s third season, and a quiet Sunday morning with the windows open, listening to the winter rain come down outside.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will

The keys make a repeated, soft sound, like the twanging of toothpicks under tension. It settles into eir head, like the waves on a distant beach settle into your bones after a few minutes, their swishings holding you up with their comforting sighs. Will turns eir head towards eir laptop and looks at what e’s written. Then e wipes eir face with both eir hands in consternation. _What was Hannibal thinking_, sending em an email from where he was in Europe, wanting Will to reply, in code, so as to not arouse the suspicions of the FBI who so obviously had a tap on Will’s unencrypted email addresses? Perhaps it was yet another of Hannibal’s tests, just to see if Will is skilled enough to comply without arousing suspicion? Maybe. Or maybe something was really wrong this time and he needed eir help.

E takes a big breath and lets it out in a slow sigh, scratching Winston idly behind his ears as he lies beside Will on their bed. No longer _their_ bed. E sighs again. Not since falling off a cliff and being reincarnated as other beings, at least in their own minds. Him as the stag of Will’s dreams and Will as . . . a something e hasn’t devised yet. Something different, definitely, especially after surviving near drowning.

Will shudders and puts the thought of a large body of water out of eir head. _To be suspended over one, hour after hour . . ._ e shudders, involuntary. Fends off a transient choking sensation and forces emself to breathe in and out slowly through eir nose. _My head’s not wet, not wet, not now, not even near a tap _, e repeats to emself the mantra that gets em through eir days. _A fisherman who’s scared of water?_ e thinks, _how ironic is that?_ Even just standing in the stream near eir property is enough to make em run screaming away some days, hip waders and rod and reel and all.

That’s the reason why Will was still here and Hannibal was across the Pond. _Pond, my ass_, e snorts in jest. _The devil rules the sea as they say, or at least he takes a fall off a cliff into it occasionally_, e thinks, and smiles. Hannibal dominates whatever environment he’s in. Why Will has feelings for that man, e’ll never really know. Understanding that will take an extra lifetime that Will doesn’t have.

E checks the time on the kitchen clock, pulling himself out of watery memories that cling. Only five more minutes before e has to leave to meet Alana and Jack for yet another debrief and lying-through-eir-teeth session. It’s another dirty job that Hannibal’s left em with. Again. E thinks of how many things Bedelia and Hannibal have gotten to experience there without em and huffs out a shorter sigh 😔 this time. _At least I still have all my parts, damaged though some of them may be_, e thinks, the taste of roast Bedelia still on the palate of his mind. Shakes eir head. _Where does Hannibal come up with his recipes? Who _cooks_ people?_


	2. Hannibal’s care of Bedelia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal, in Scotland.

Hannibal had finished typing and had sent the email to Will many minutes ago. Bedelia was still moaning softly on the bed beside their desk, recovering from the sedation from the latest procedure. He had checked her dressings carefully for signs of excessive bleeding before he had started the email. All seemed to be well. 

Bedelia had an amazing aptitude for healing, herself and others. Resiliency can be an awkward thing in certain circumstances, as Will knew. In Bedelia’s case, Hannibal wasn’t sure where she regarded her own—a useful pit of agony or a top shelf way to live long enough to exact her revenge on Hannibal and perhaps now Will. 

His gaze has been drawn out the window and rested idly on the tallest thing in view, the Scott Monument. Edinburgh had so many interesting places to explore and Bedelia was now perfectly suited to exploring it, with her single leg, and perfectly unsuited, with her . . .

But as his lips curved up into a small smile and his eyes alit with his own jest, his thoughts wandered back to the problem at hand. He missed Will terribly, now that they’d come to the understanding that neither could live without the other, at least in spirit if not in body. Hannibal preferred body, and mind, and soul. But that was not possible at the moment. At this moment, Hannibal was a wanted man. Interpol, FBI, you name it. 

Traveling with Bedelia as a couple might work twice for a short time but he doubted it. Each loss required a re-location to prevent further explanation. One meal, one city, one monument to humankind’s ability to shape immense things out of stone—and flesh. And he had planned for that, and for a proper kitchen and facilities at each location. Alas, each has had its own challenges. 


	3. Will’s bedtime musings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will, in the dark

The stink of poverty and an air of refinement. Description influences how we feel about a subject, every damn day. Advertising hopes to turn our minds and emotions by obvious and less obvious means. A charismatic speaker pulls us along with her voice, making us want to chase it back to its source, to feel the closeness or to join the fight. It makes us want to caress or kill, depending on what emotions are incited. To feel the honey drip of physical satiation or the exhilaration of putting down an evil thing after a long and bitter hunt. 

Will knows these things and yet. And yet Hannibal is the one that gets under eir skin. With small nudges and gentle pushes, e bends to the man’s will and thinks it eir own free will. But it never is. But Will can’t help emself. E’d rather drown in Hannibal’s gaze alone than live in the seeming drought of anyone else’s physical attentions. He’s the lock that fits Will’s key, the soft oyster for eir pearl. Pearls are a result of constant irritation over the years. It makes Will wonder what it’s like to be inside Hannibal’s head, if eir’s acquiescence is the precious result, what pain Will’s resistance has caused him for so long. E muses on it for a while before sleep claims em, drawing eir lids down and down into the intimate dark.


	4. Bedelia gets clean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bedelia in Scotland

Bedelia put her palms flat against the adjoining tile walls of the shower and lets the hot water run over her face, head, shoulders, and back. She had to sit now, as standing was no longer an option; Hannibal had seen to that. She could not really reach the controls and would have to call him to adjust them if need be. But this was the only time that he would leave her alone. She would not call him right now even if she were flinging icicles from her lips or having her skin scorched off. She wanted to think about escape but all she could do was enjoy today’s guaranteed moment alone. She knew that she would not get many more of those, judging by his appetite. 

And where was Will? Was e still back in the States, cleaning up Hannibal’s mess with yet another bulldozer’s blade full of lies? She tipped her head back again, knowing she needed to get clean before the next onslaught, to be medical or sight-seeing she did not know.


	5. Debrief, my ass!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will would rather not be talking on this side of the Pond

The wicked and wandering wind blows around Will’s house with force. E thinks that one of these days it will pick up a corner and lift the roof off its moorings. Like Hannibal did with my mind, not so long ago, e ponders, not wanting to look at that particular melding of minds and wills. Some things are just too hard to contemplate in a continuing aftermath like the one they were all in now. 

Jack had been rather pointed in his questions about Hannibal’s whereabouts this afternoon. Will had kept eir composure through most of it, though e started staring through the frame of eir glasses halfway through and e felt eir cheek start that involuntary twitch when Alana offhandedly mentioned her and Margot’s plans for a vacation in an undisclosed location at an unspecified future time. They were still being careful, in case her brother-in-law’s reach extended beyond the grave.

The wind picks up outside of Will’s small house. Something metal bangs against something else metal as the slanting rain begins to tap insistently on the South big picture window. Sheets of rain soon start scouring the soaked grasses outside, their regular whispering dulled by the moisture. Will’s thoughts turn to the distance between them. 

-Always running off, doing his own thing, me here taking care of the dogs while he’s swilling champagne in Europe! Typical-

E swears e feels left behind because e is. Again. Out of the loop, again. Alone, again. Eir skin hungers for Hannibal’s touch, his breath, his eyes . . . . Will’s hand starts wandering to the waistband of eir pants.


	6. Hannibal being Hannibal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal in Scotland

The scarlet blood on the white substrate has a depth to it; a weightiness, like it knows it was someone’s lifeblood. The last blood made by a body that no longer breathes. Hannibal had ordered out this week: he had tired of home-cooked meals consisting of his ever-dwindling traveling companion. England’s limited cuisine had given him a hankering for something more . . . substantial. 

He had gotten a small short-term storage space and prepared it for dinner’s preparations or at least the meat’s ministrations. The burly Scot looked well-marbled with fat, and, despite his inexcusable rudeness on the train regarding Bedelia’s wheelchair, he wonders who he was being rude -for-, as he has been travelling with his own wife and children. 

Hannibal was always intensely interested in people’s motivations—and how to control them. He had smoothed things over with the Scot and gotten his business card on the pretence of purchasing some of his travelling salesman’s wares. He was constantly appalled at how much lack of caution the public displayed in giving out their contact information to people in person, especially on this side of the Atlantic. Some showed better sense online, some not. 

Luckily for Hannibal’s palate, this man threw caution to the wind once he thought he’d gotten the upper hand through his belligerence towards Hannibal. -not everyone with poor taste tastes bad in the end-. He smiled to himself as he started removing a choice cut.


	7. Will’s unexpected adventure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will starts out in the US

E was always cursed with consciousness, an acute awareness of everything that most people around em did not have, save for Hannibal and maybe Alana. Will was very aware of the feeb tail e’d picked up at the airport. The usefulness of a men’s room with dual entrances pressed hard upon eir mind. E entered and started washing eir hands and face, salty summer sweatiness momentarily relieved by the fresh mineral smell of the cool, flowing water, caught by eir hands and guided over eir heated skin. 

E barely noticed a whiff of something familiar before a sharp feeling in eir neck translated to eir muscles turning to mush, Hannibal quickly at eir back, guiding em to a curiously handy wheelchair, so often found roaming lonely corners of airports. 

Here was Hannibal, extinguishing Will’s literal consciousness yet again. This time e didn’t even have time to get out a syllable of protest before Hannibal took away eir agency, again. If Will had had more control over eir muscles right now, e’d be taking his head off with yelling. E’s eyelids drooped and blackness soon followed.

...

As it was, it was all e could do to not drool the spit out of eir mouth as Hannibal rolled them through security or customs or wherever the Hell they were while others looked upon Will with pity, misgendering em with their whispers of “Look at that poor disabled man! What a doting brother/carer he has!” Will could just imagine. E could almost clench eir jaw in anger. Almost and then e blacked out for good this time. 

...

E woke naked in a warm bed with an equally naked Hannibal curled around em like a snail shell, perfectly fitted to em, legs and feet and arms and fingers entwined. By the sound of his breathing, Hannibal was awake and aware and just waiting for Will to say something to him. 

Will could feel the slight tension in his muscles, a knowing anticipation of Will’s justifiable wrath. But Will was -here-, they were touching and the months of skin hunger were over, finally over. Will couldn’t move, could only flex in place to make sure e had actually been allowed control over all eir limbs. With Hannibal, one never quite took for granted that that would always be the case. 

And then the distracted moaning started in the next room and the spell was broken.


End file.
